Robots Perform Shakespeare

A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been updated for the 21st century with seven small robots playing fairies alongside carbon-based co-stars.

Beyond being a cool thing to do, researchers saw bringing bots to the Bard as a chance to introduce robots to the public and see how people interact with them. Their findings could influence how robots are designed and how they’re used in search-and-rescue operations.

“It’s now possible for these unmanned aerial vehicles to be used for evacuation or crowd control,” said Robin Murphy, a computer science and engineering professor at Texas A&M University, which staged the production. “But what’s missing is an understanding of what makes a person trust or fear the robot.”

Murphy can change that. She leads the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, and her bots have combed the rubble of the World Trade Center, crawled into caved-in mines and searched collapsed buildings around the world. But this is the first time they’ve taken to the stage, and it provided some interesting insights.

This AirRobot played a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The play was a collaboration between the university’s computer science, electrical engineering and performance studies departments. Purists may balk at reworking one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays to include robots, but director Amy Hopper jumped at the chance.

“What’s great is that they have been part of the production from the beginning, and the robots seem more and more like characters that have always been part of the story,” she said. “To see them flying, spinning and bouncing through the air just adds to the magic and mystery of the world Shakespeare created.”

The biggest of the mechanical stars was an AirRobot with four rotors. It’s about the size of a large pizza. Cops and soldiers use them for surveillance, and they’ve been deployed in Iraq. It was joined by a squadron of E-Flight micro helicopters about the size of your fist. Casting them in a play was a great chance to see how man and machine interact and what can be done to make robots more like humans.

“There’s all this potential for robots to play a more affective role,” Murphy said. “There isn’t a book we can go to that says ‘Do this.’ But performing-arts people know all about this.”

During several months of rehearsals and eight performances that ended Sunday, Murphy and her colleagues Dylan Shell and Takis Zourntos found the actors and audience had little fear of the robots but scant understanding of how they work or how delicate they are. People invariably would handle them roughly, leading to occasional damage and crashes — one reason Murphy provided three AirRobots and 22 micro-copters.

“People’s expectations of robots don’t match those of roboticists,” Murphy said. “When the little robots would crash during rehearsal, the actors would just pick it up and throw it into the air thinking it would fly. We saw the audience do similar things.”

The rough handling softened, however, when the actors were told to think of the bots as baby fairies. After that, the actors began showing concern if the bots crashed. In other words, they bonded with the machines. That could have big implications for the design of search and rescue robots, which might be the first thing to reach, for instance, someone trapped in a collapsed mineshaft and their only contact with the outside world for hours. If it were you in that hole, would you want to be stuck with a cold machine like T-1000 or a friendly one like WALL-E?

“That robot is your medium to the world,” Murphy said. “If it behaves in a way that’s disrespectful or frustrating or creepy, you’ll stop listening to the directions coming through it from a search and rescue crew, a doctor or anyone else.”

Murphy discovered something else about the robots, particularly the micro-copters. People trusted them and wanted to follow them around. That’s perfect for, say, search and rescue situations where you’re leading people to safety. It’s not so good when you’re using aerial vehicles to control a rioting crowd. That suggests engineers and roboticists should consider what purpose a bot will serve, and thus adjust its appearance, color and sound accordingly.

“We need additional research on how to make them move like friendly hummingbirds or angry bees to get the desired effect,” Murphy said, offering two examples of how a robot might be tailored to match its purpose.

The play closed Sunday, but the work continues. Murphy would like to see more plays starring robots and said NASA is interested in similar research to see how people interact with machines. In the meantime, she and her colleagues are sifting through their findings.

“We’re going to continue looking over our results to codify what we’ve learned,” she said. “Hopefully this will lead to robots that are more trustworthy and can convey the information they need to get across to help you.”

Here’s The Thing With Ad Blockers

We get it: Ads aren’t what you’re here for. But ads help us keep the lights on. So, add us to your ad blocker’s whitelist or pay $1 per week for an ad-free version of WIRED. Either way, you are supporting our journalism. We’d really appreciate it.